He Wasn’t Exactly a Thundering Hoard

Former USC running back Petros Papadakis said on KMPC on Thursday morning that his all-time favorite quote came from former Michigan and NFL running back Leroy Hoard.

“Toward the end of his career, when he was with the Minnesota Vikings, someone asked Leroy to describe his style,” Papadakis said. “I liked his response because it reminded me of my style when I was playing.

“He said, ‘You need two yards, I’ll get you three. You need 10 yards, I’ll get you three.’ ”

Trivia time: What season did the NBA begin using the 24-second clock?

Makes sense: The Professional Bull Riders’ World Finals are taking place in Las Vegas this weekend. ESPN the Magazine wanted to know why bull riders had to stay on for eight seconds.

Competitor Adriano Moraes said, “Because seven is not long enough and nine is too long.”

Said another rider, Mike White: “You have to ride eight seconds because them’s the rules.”

Genius at work: Shaquille O’Neal, in a TNT interview with Cheryl Miller that aired Thursday, said, “I made a 1,600 minus 800 minus 200 on the SAT, so I’m very intelligent when I speak.”

Coming soon: O’Neal, about his feud with Kobe Bryant, told Miller: “In this world we live in now, reality messy TV has taken over. And I guarantee you if we had our own show, Shaq vs. Kobe, Kobe vs. Shaq, you wouldn’t watch ‘The Osbournes,’ you wouldn’t watch ‘Punk’d,’ you wouldn’t watch none of those shows ‘cause everyone wants to know how we really are.”

More from Shaq: KLAC producer Sheron Bellio passed along this Shaq gem from Tuesday’s postgame show: “Kobe is one of the F-1 jet fighters, Karl is like one of those assault tanks, Gary is like a special type CIA, and I’m nuclear, of course.”

Worthy advice: James Worthy, a guest on Dan Patrick’s ESPN radio show, was asked about the Kobe-Shaq feud.

“Magic and I didn’t always get along, but we had our rules,” Worthy said. “It stayed in house, stayed in the locker room. When we had a problem, we talked it out. Our need for each other was bigger than our egos.”

Just like in the movie: Groundbreaking was held recently for a new Big League Dreams sports complex on property near Manteca, Calif., that was adjacent to a cornfield. Appropriately, a Shoeless Joe Jackson character, wearing an old Chicago White Sox uniform, emerged from the cornfield.

“I’m told there’s a field of dreams here, and I’m looking for a game to play,” the Jackson character told a surprised group of dignitaries, among them Vida Blue, Maury Wills and Bill Russell.

Trivia answer: 1954-55.

And finally: Reader Vern Gould, responding to a Morning Briefing trivia item about the 1926 Los Angeles Buccaneers, offers a brilliant suggestion: Bring a traveling NFL team to L.A.

Just think, no stadium would be needed and there wouldn’t be any TV blackouts.

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.